The other morning, I was taking patients’ vital signs at the ungodly hour of 6am. I really, really hate waking people up that early. Like, really hate it. My last patient that morning was this middle aged Jamaican guy, who has been so lovely in the few days that I worked with him. He comes from a huge family, and coincidentally, he and my preceptor are both the fifth child of nine. Crazy.
Anyway, so I go into his room, wake him up as nicely as possible, apologize that it’s so early, and tell him I’m going to take his vital signs. He goes, “You love your job, don’t you?” I told him I’m still learning, but that I’m really enjoying being at Cornell, and I’m glad that I’ve had such great patients to work with. (I didn’t mention how excited I was that I got to put in like 8 catheters, but whatever.)
He wears this giant bathrobe to bed, so we got to talking about how he feels more comfortable when he’s really warm, because he’s an islander and he’s used to it being 93 degrees in the shade. I tell him that it never gets that hot where I’m from, and that my first summer in New York, I was absolutely melting. Of course, he asks where I’m from. I tell him, and he just launches into how much he loooooooves San Francisco. If he were going to live anywhere other than New York, it would definitely be San Francisco. It’s such an amazing city, yadda yadda. I tell him that while I was born in SF, I grew up across the bay, and was living in Berkeley and Oakland for the past several years.
After he was done gushing, he goes, “So, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what the HELL are you doing out here if you’re from San Francisco?” I told him, “Well, I got into Columbia. How was I going to say no to Columbia?” He was like, “OH, no, you don’t say no to Columbia!”
I’ve had a whole bunch of amazing patients over the past week or so. I had another one who was reciting the Jabberwocky to me, along with other assorted poems he’d memorized. And a lady who is really excited about my life path and thinks I’ll be a wonderful nurse. It’s all very heartwarming and more than makes up for how effed up my sleep cycle has become working the night shift. Seriously, I’m a night owl and everything, and I tend to stay up really late. But there’s something about getting home and getting into to bed at like 9am that messes with your head.
Only one more week until I’m eligible to take the RN licensing exam…it’s totally blowing my mind.
